


as long as you look

by redreys



Series: Original Characters' Statements [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, The Vast Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), and how getting lost is the solution to all evils?, and then ending up reading someone monologue on wrongness, ever stopped to read something weird you found on a random street, if not- this is your chance!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:27:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26669698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redreys/pseuds/redreys
Summary: I am far enough away to not suffer from that absence of luck, and I am deep enough into this river that touching stones warms me, sustains me. I can feel the strength of the current, and whenever my fingers reach the grass, the soil, the roots, I feel alive, I feellost. I let go and my skin hurts from behind the push of the water.If you have seen wrongness, and if you have seen time, then you have seen me. I am irrelevant, I am forgettable, I am fleeting, and I am not interested in ever smiling at anyone for long, but I am askingyou: how do I look?
Series: Original Characters' Statements [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2087139
Comments: 10
Kudos: 11





	as long as you look

**Author's Note:**

> [CW: my character doesn’t remember much about her life and her identity, and though she specifically doesn’t suffer because of her memory loss (as she was the one to choose to forget) that loss often comes up in her narration] 
> 
> title (and piece in general) is partially inspired by [this poem](https://genius.com/Wislawa-szymborska-travel-elegy-annotated), because everything i do must be connected to Wisława Szymborska and I have come to accept that
> 
> \+ an eternal thank you to remus for listening to my rambles and reading my first drafts

_[ it’s a cool Wednesday evening, and you are walking down a street you don’t know very well. you are trying to find this supermarket that opened about a week ago, primarily because you have been told by an acquaintance that their prices are pretty cheap. at 7:13 pm, you get to a crossroad. you are about to turn left when suddenly, from several feet over, you notice a newspaper left open on top of a dumpster. it’s not thrown in, it’s not crumpled_ — _it simply lays there, covering the hole._

_instinctively, you check your watch. the supermarket doesn’t close until 9._

_you can indulge in this one hitch._

_with a single shrug, you walk forward to reach the dumpster. when you get close enough to inspect the newspaper, you realise abruptly that someone has written all over it with a red marker. the words are very hard to read, because the marker is visible from both the back and the front of the papers, and the letters interlock with one another constantly. still, you flip over the newspaper. still, you look for a starting point, a way to make this make sense._

_when you find a beginning, you lean on the wall behind you and start reading. ]_

  
  


_the newspaper says:_

  
  


There are a number of things that are simply wrong. It’s not a large number, and the selection is entirely subjective. It changes, depending on who you are, and where you are standing, and why, and with whom, but it _is_ real. Some things _are_ tangibly, demonstratively wrong. 

It’s not an ethical kind of wrong—I am not talking about cruel things, though there are plenty of those, too—and it’s not about absence or misplacement, either. 

It’s about the inherent, irrational wrongness of routine existence, of mindless normalcy. It’s the effort of fitting a book into a shelf, it’s opening the cabinet and unlocking a rusty door. It’s lights that are on when they shouldn’t be, hallways that are too goddamn large and people that are awake at the incorrect time, when you are exhausted and just looking for a silent refuge, a stage without witnesses.

It’s the kind of wrong you can’t complain about because there is nothing to say. How do you start that conversation, how do you break through a single knot in your hair? 

Imagine that it’s just one. Imagine having long, straight hair and pushing a brush through the strands, and there is a knot that won’t go away, and it’s small, and it tangibly hurts, and all your attention is focused on the push of the plastic against the locked passage, the pull of your hair from the roots in your scalp. Would there be any thought worth voicing? Would you not still fixate on the sensation, though it has no relevance? 

You know, what used to upset me is not that it hurts for long, or that it hurts too much, but that it hurts at all. That the universe is unthinkably large and still I have to notice, to slow myself down because I get tangled up into what should not matter. 

With time, (though I honestly can’t remember when precisely the shift happened) my feelings changed, and now I have come to love wrongness. I love it because it is an anchor, and it always, always breaks. It lets me breathe _again_ , lets me float out of the soil and experience release without enduring too much pressure. 

I should say that touching the earth with bare feet doesn’t burn me anymore, even when the earth is essentially hot sand, and that ability to lose my senses plays a role in how easy this life comes to me. 

I don’t like desperation, and I am not trying to promote it, so if at the thought of letting go you think of drawing into despair, you don’t yet understand what I mean. This has nothing to do with loss. You shouldn’t purposely attend a bad concert and sink into the missed notes. _I_ am looking for details, whatever ‘details’ might mean to you. I am looking for things that by all rights you should miss, but notice nevertheless.

When I feel smallness scratch against my skin in the distance, like maybe my skin isn’t even truly mine, when I separate wonder from pain, when my memory clears into empty landscapes where nothing is allowed to ever end, to ever begin, then I realize that I am a miracle, and no one will live long enough to keep my story safe. Everyone is a walking masterpiece and none of us will be remembered. And _that_ is beauty. 

By now, if I look into a mirror, or accidentally notice my speech patterns, or maybe remember anything about my parents, my story, or my family, I _immediately_ lose focus. The image disappears before I can get a proper hold on to it. Answers are not useless, per se, but they are not permanent. They will stop making sense at some point, and I can cut the thread sooner. I can live without knowing. 

How great is that? I am capable of living without knowing. 

Right about now, I am sitting on a desolate sidewalk, writing down these words on yesterday’s newspaper with a red marker, and I don’t know what I am wearing.

I could look down and tell you, relay it with however much detail I can reasonably put into my description, but there’s no good reason to do it. _Don’t think about an elephant_ will never work on me. I can forget, any day any time, what elephants even are. 

Curiosity was one of the first things I began losing, I think. I am still capable of feeling interest (anything fleeting is worth noticing as long as I can lose it just as quickly) but I don’t care about discovery anymore.

If a divine power exists, I would unthinkingly walk past them on the street. Some say that even _I_ am supposed to have a deity, that this vastness can fit into a single being, almighty and untouchable, but to me it doesn’t really make a difference whether those people are right. Faith isn’t the point. Faith is a direction, and I only want to be lost.

Don’t try to tell me what life means, if you ever meet me. I can listen, but it will not stick, and I will not be able to understand.

In fact, if you are reading these pages, and want to try and hunt me down, I am warning you now that you will only ever find me if you are exactly like me. If reading my words feels wrong—wrong in a good way—and if for every sentence you read the previous one disappears from your memory, then... well. Congratulations. You are stuck now, stuck in this freedom that I cannot sell you but that I hope you would like to try. 

You should know that there are other escapes out there, other ways to break reality into pieces, or push yourself through its rules, become something that isn’t simply or just human. You can make your head spin, you can get out of your identity by turning it into a title, by twisting your sentences into lies that are impossible to disprove. You _have_ the option to take those paths, you _do_ , but the point is that you are here, listening to _me_ , reading _my_ words, unable to stop processing sentences that shouldn’t make sense and yet do. So what’s the deal, darling? Why pick up this mess at all?

You’d laugh at me if you could see where I am, I think. Maybe then it would be clearer, you would perceive my effort in just the right light, and stop fixating on the questions. Passerby look at me funny, when I am out without protection, and you’d look at me like that, too. Their gazes (your gazes) either slide off me or get stuck right in the middle of my forehead. I never raise my eyes up to theirs, but I am sure they know that I am looking back. 

There is this specific woman, who stopped walking just to stare. I wish you could see her, wish I’d known how to draw her, make her image just as fuzzy and realistic as it looks in the back of my head. 

I can tell that she is young, maybe 25 years old, and she seems pretty disoriented. Her hair is dyed red and the job isn’t well executed. She got it done yesterday and she despises how it came out, how it looks on her face. 

I mean to tell her: don’t. I mean to tell her: hey, shut up. Hey, don’t think. Forget, get lost with me. This can’t matter, it _can’t_ , and it’s an impossibility that it somehow does. _That is the key, darling. That is the key._

Words aren’t as effective as I would like them to be. They sound shallow, even in my own head, and she will not be able to detach herself enough to fly, won’t know how to properly turn fear into serenity. It’s not time yet, it never is on the first try. 

If she looks hard enough, though, at some point this won’t be a street anymore, and it’ll look nameless, and oh so small, and there will be no left, no right, no fixed point of reference. If she looks hard enough, she’ll forget about her hair, and her dentist appointment, and all the words she hasn’t said to her mum. It will all be unimportant, and silly. This will be about my hands, and nothing else. 

She is staring at them. My hands, I mean. I am still writing in big letters onto this messy newspaper, and she is staring at my hands. I think she wants to cross the street and ask me what the words say, but she isn’t trying to just guess from there. That’s good, that’s a nice start. Maybe this memory will haunt her long enough to turn her into a ghost, and even if I don’t believe in ghosts anymore, I can believe in her, just for a while. I can hope that her palm will hold pure, contextless terror like the treasure it is, and learn to risk her life to reach mine. I can hope that she will recognize that terror as powerless, that she will know that our fear is not the kind you feel because you are being pressured, but rather it is the kind you summon when you realise that there is no true power other than time.

If I am lucky, she will end up here with me, and if I am extremely lucky, she will not recognise me. We will both smile, and then immediately forget. Her hair will grow forever, and she won’t cut it if not by mistake. There’s a small mirror in her bag, and she won’t know. She won’t care to know. 

We can both live without knowing, I want to tell her. I don’t age anymore, I mean to say, but, eventually, we will both disappear into nothingness. I want to charm her, lead her into my world with quiet elegance. I want her to _feel_ , and want her to do it now, and yet—yet there’s still something in me that is trying to do it as quietly as possible. 

That’s part of who I used to be, by the way. I forgot most of myself, but it’s in these moments of struggle that I can tell how careful I must have acted during my normal life. I must have tiptoed around edges, talked slowly, almost whispered. 

The voice in my head is shy, but I am not. I look at the woman, my head still lowered and my gaze still trapped into the red ink, and I tell her: get lost. Stay here. 

She might be scared, right now. I don’t know. Can’t really tell. Stopped being able to classify what’s fear and what’s interest a long time ago. I know that she is listening, though. I know that she is paying attention to me right now, that she is captivated by my slow movements. My calligraphy gets bigger, I take more time to form the letters. I might have to use another newspaper if I intend to finish this.

I write _are you there?_ and another person walks right into her. I see it happen and she doesn’t. I only see it happen because I am trying to help her. I only see it happen because I want you to know, and then later I want you to forget. 

She’s looking for release right now. I can feel her letting her anxiety loose, letting herself freeze and adapt in hopes of regaining strength. I am sure she will, at least for now. 

I only wait thirty seconds, the time it takes to finish this sentence, my fingers moving agonizingly slow, and then—here it is. Here, I allow her to sink back into her red hair and cracked mirrors. She is free. 

Immediately, she turns, looking for an obstacle that isn’t there, something to justify her fear. I have stopped existing in her line of vision, and I can offer no aid. She takes out her phone, scrolls through the contact list, calls a person who can try to comfort her. I think that person might indeed support her, make her feel loved, enough to not let her fall, and that’s good. That’s fine. What matters is that she will remember how slow I was writing, that the ache and the sting will survive through the gaps of her recollection, clash into her calligraphy, stop her dead in her tracks when she is too late to ever be on time. 

I know that from my phrasings it seems like I want her to be here, to become what I am, but I don’t _truly_ care. She can live with her yearning, and it’s that yearning that matters. It’s another kind of wrongness. My slow hands, her unfulfilled chance. It’s another anchor. Another time I said _if I am lucky_ , and then wasn’t. 

I am far enough away to not suffer from that absence of luck, and I am deep enough into this river that touching stones warms me, sustains me. I can feel the strength of the current, and whenever my fingers reach the grass, the soil, the roots, I feel alive, I feel _lost_. I let go and my skin hurts from behind the push of the water. 

I don’t know if you like me, darling, and I don’t know that you should, but I ask you to hang on to this, to remember even as you slowly forget. Some will tell you that the universe is too large to fit into our minds, and while that’s true, it is no good reason to avoid thinking about it. We don’t do what fits, we are not what _fits_. That’s such a limited idea of what our lives should be, and, frankly, it is quite sad. 

If you have seen wrongness, and if you have seen time, then you have seen me. I am irrelevant, I am forgettable, I am fleeting, and I am not interested in ever smiling at anyone for long, but I am asking _you_ : how do I look? 

Of course, I don’t want you to actually answer, but listen to my question. _How do I look?_ Imagine me: try to picture my fingers, my skin, lend me strength, make me shine, give me your best friend’s cheeks and your first love’s laughter. Then tell me, how do I look? 

I don’t sound like my features, and I will never stare into a mirror, but I need your eyes right now. I want to know if I still exist. And I do, don’t I? You are remembering me, even though you will forget? 

My voice in your head is keeping my memory floating, so let me enjoy it for a while. Let me say a few last things.

Let me tell you, my favourite colour used to be pink. Storms still unsettle me. I haven’t eaten chocolate in forty-seven years. My sister’s name was short. 

Let me breathe it out one last time.

I used to say I like cats better than dogs, but that has always been a lie. I have never been funny, I have never been truly sweet. I was a good kisser. Venus was my favourite planet. 

I can feel my hands relaxing, blooming, turning into flowers, and I say _Goodbye, darling._ If I ever see you again, I will not be able to tell. 

The water runs down the river. I let go of the grass. 

  
  


_the newspaper has no other pages._

  
  


_[ you don’t make it in time to the supermarket. ]_

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!! comments are always welcomed. hope you liked my scary wife
> 
> also, you can find me on tumblr as [mxrspider](https://mxrspider.tumblr.com/) 🌻


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